


Not Quite Shrouded in Darkness

by sheberry (orphan_account)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (maybe), (not really but the Memory Palace certainly doesn't work that way), Gen, Ghosts, M/M, Meeting your sister-in-law the unconventional way, Supernatural Elements, Will wandering the Memory Palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 06:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15188540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/sheberry
Summary: A different interpretation of the "darkest" corner of Hannibal's mind.





	Not Quite Shrouded in Darkness

Will was wandering the halls of their shared memory palace alone. It was a quarter past three in the morning, and he found he couldn’t sleep any longer. Hannibal, it seemed, wasn’t bothered by that problem in the slightest. He was fast asleep beside him.

It didn’t happen all too often that one of them visited the memory palace when the other wasn’t there. Each of them had rooms of his own left, of course. It was a small sense of privacy in two otherwise shared minds. Visiting those rooms anyway, however, was never met with reproach. In the end, neither of them had the urgent need to protect some part of himself.

Will had never been in the rooms that belonged to Hannibal. No matter how much they enjoyed being mentally conjoined, the darker places within Hannibal had been something he had avoided. There was enough darkness in his own mind. Darkness, to him, was contagious. He didn’t need to catch whatever plagued Hannibal to the point of insomnia some rare nights. But now that Hannibal was asleep, now that his personal torment was caged and tamed for the time being, it seemed safe to wander around.

He lay on his back, hands folded on his chest, looking up at the dark ceiling until the picture blurred in front of his eyes and was replaced with the golden-glimmering arches of the Capella Palatina, the place where both their palaces started. It was Hannibal’s creation, originally, but Will had quickly made it his own, adding doors where there were none, adding memories, lighting a few candles here and there.

He knew that the wooden doors leading to the catacombs in the real church in Palermo were used by Hannibal as the entrance to his own personal underworld. _He never goes there, but he has done so once, for me._ Will expected the same candle-lit, grotto-like environment, the narrow passageways of stone. What he found, instead, was light.

Hannibal had told him (in his own mind, but it did count for Will) that music would reverberate through that place and distract him from the screams. Will heard neither one nor the other. What he did hear were the faraway cries of seagulls, the nearby cooing of pigeons. Slowly-moving water from somewhere down below.

He stood in a long hallway with a high ceiling, quite obviously belonging to some Italian palazzo or another. It didn’t look markedly different from any other room in Hannibal’s part of the memory palace. It fit his taste. Almost. It was naïve, a bit childlike, the colours too saturated, the hallway too packed with tall and tiny treasures, statues, paintings, potted plants. No grown man had built any of this.

Dust particles danced through the air, but they didn’t make breathing any harder. They couldn’t tickle one’s throat. They were as unreal as everything else in those rooms. That was the blessing of the memory palace. Experience every pleasure your senses can conjure, enjoy every blessing, with none of the curses that come with reality.

To Will, the entire room was a shock. He had braced himself—once, twice, and, reluctantly, a third time—before entering through those doors. He had expected dungeons, not unlike the one he had found below Castle Lecter. An unassuming wine cellar with a darker secret hidden among forgotten bottles filled with red. What he hadn’t dreamed to find was exactly what he saw stretching out before him now.

The hallway ended in a dead end, a wall decorated with several paintings. The rays of sun coming in from various doorways on the way didn’t reach them enough to allow Will a closer look. Hesitantly, he made a step. Nothing happened. His steps did not reverberate. Feeling incorporeal himself, he walked down the hall, his gaze focused only on the paintings. He narrowed his eyes to try and _see_.

Only when he had nearly passed the second doorway, it reached his ears, as if it hadn’t even been there before and had only materialised upon his arrival: fast and lively ballet music.

Will startled and looked to his left. What he saw could only be described as a hybrid between a ballroom and Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors. The endless lines of mirrors were interspersed by a few stray windows that, strangely enough, allowed him to look out at the canals of Venice. The music had no obvious source. It simply filled the hall with its ghostly presence. The overall picture made it easy to overlook the lithe shape dancing in front of one of the windows. But as soon as she had caught his eye, it was an impossible task to look away again.

Blond hair pinned up into a tight bun, wearing a glistening tutu in tones of light pink and champagne, she looked like an angel. Too perfect to be real. But she wasn’t. Or maybe, Will considered, she was the only truly real thing in halls among halls filled with dreams.

She took no notice of him, but instead prepared for a move more difficult than the pliés she had been practicing before. She stretched her legs, her feet clad in small ballerina shoes. Then she took a breath, braced herself, closed her eyes and built up momentum.

As she started whirling around, the world shifted. The very room flickered in and out of existence, the mirrors suddenly gone and replaced with dark wood and burgundy curtains on every second pirouette. Now, she wore a blood-red dress, now the tutu was back, now her hair was pinned-up again, now it was open and flying around her in untamed strands of gold thread.

Will knew Hannibal was able to do all that to his memory palace. He could render the laws of physics entirely non-existent with a single thought and could twist reality any way he wanted. In contrast to Will’s own rooms, Hannibal’s were very rarely constant. But Hannibal had given up control over those rooms. They answered to _her_ will alone. The small bit of will she had left.

Will was mesmerised. He stared at her until his eyes lost focus and she blurred. Twenty-one pirouettes he had counted when she slowed down and returned to her old position, standing straight, almost exaggeratingly so. And then he heard her laugh to herself before she lost her posture and was only a little girl again, dressed as any ballerina would be for her practice. She settled on the windowsill, one leg drawn up, her arms slung around it with a grace that seemed only a little too mature for her perceived age.

Ghosts will reply to you if you call out their name, should you even know it, and Will did know it.

“Mischa!”

The girl jumped with a small gasp and turned around, her face frozen in an expression of horror. The fear in her eyes felt so real that Will was sure she had died with that exact expression etched onto her features. Even though she was little more than a spectre, he immediately felt guilty for having scared her so badly.

“Who are you?” she asked, and her English was accent-free. It was Will’s only contribution to the scene. He doubted Mischa had been fluent in English when she had died, so he gave her that skill as a present. Any polite guest should bring a gift for the host.

“I’m Will. Will Graham.” For some reason, he had expected her to know him, but it slowly dawned on him that if Hannibal kept the doors sealed tightly enough, then their separation was all-encompassing and bilateral. Mischa could not leave those halls, because they were the only place in the world where she still existed. And nothing of the still-existing world could ever touch her in there.

“Why are you here?” Her face was no longer twisted into a fearful grimace, but she was still sceptical, her fingers tapping against her knee nervously.

It was strange how her features had nothing of Hannibal in them. She was in no way recognisable as his sister. The high cheekbones, maybe, but her young age made it nearly impossible to guess what she would have looked like in adulthood. Will had seen pictures of her in France, but she had been even younger in them than she was now. This was Mischa on the day of her death, eleven years old, small for her age, but probably still growing. Not now anymore. She would remain eleven until a second death had occurred and with it the destruction of the entire memory palace. Mischa would not exist a day longer than her brother. Their fates were well and truly tied now.

“I’m sorry for disturbing your dancing.”

“I was finished. How can you be here?”

“I know Hannibal very well.”

At the mention of his name, she lost all caution. She sat up straight and let her legs dangle from the windowsill, gripping the stone tightly around its edges in excitement. “Tell me about my brother!”

“You probably haven’t seen him in ages, have you? Do you know how much time has passed?”

She shook her head.

“A little more than forty years.”

“He’s an old man now!” The very thought seemed to amuse her.

Will’s brows furrowed. “I wouldn’t call him an old man. But he’s certainly not a boy any longer. It has been a while.”

She seemed ponderous. “I don’t remember my death.”

“No doubt a kindness from your brother.”

“I was always the only one he was kind to.”

“Well, you’re not anymore, now. Though I don’t doubt he was kinder to you than he was to me.”

Mischa knew her brother well enough to immediately look at the scar on Will’s forehead while ignoring the one on his cheek. “What did he try there? Crack your skull?”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re still here. So you made up?”

“I forgave him for a great many things.”

“Are you his friend? He’d like that. I was always his only friend. And I’m no longer there to protect him. But he needs someone to protect him, even though he says he doesn’t. He’s not as strong as he acts.”

“I know. But it took me a while to see. I am his friend. I’m also…” He started stammering, and that alone gave it away, really.

Mischa nodded knowingly. “I’m a child, but I’m not stupid, Will Graham. I’m glad he found someone who could love him. But I wouldn’t exactly envy you.”

“Yeah, you shouldn’t.”

She had that look in her eyes again, the very same one she had worn before asking about her death, and Will braced himself for any morbid questions to come. They did come, and she didn’t even change her tone of voice, as if all that was entirely normal for her. “Did he bury me?”

“He didn’t.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Did he burn me?”

He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t get those words to leave his mouth. There was no way to tell that girl what had happened to her body.

“Did he simply let me lie somewhere to rot?”

“No, he- He…”

“He ate me.”

Will realised in that moment that her semblance of her brother was intellectual and not physical. She had Hannibal’s lightning-quick wits, and even though she didn’t seem cruel, Will knew she had been exposed to Hannibal’s personality just as he had been, just as they had all been. And he knew what it had done to them. To grow up with that sort of influence would have done a great many things to a child.

“Come.” Giving in to a sudden impulse, he offered her his hand.

“Why?”

“Come here. I want to look at you properly for once.”

“I won’t be so pretty anymore when I leave this room. This is Venice. I am prettiest here.”

But she did come, getting up from her warm, sunny place on the windowsill and making her way over to him. The moment she crossed the threshold into the hallway, her appearance changed. Her formerly blue eyes became dead and grey, as did her skin. Her hair was suddenly dirty, streaked with mud, clods of earth tangled in the once silky strands. Marks appeared on her throat, bruises from being choked. To death, probably. Her once beautiful ballet outfit was torn in various places. From navel to collarbone, there was a line of red, blood soaking the fabric and dripping, but never hitting the floor. He noticed now that the hand with which she gripped his own tightly had six fingers.

“Your hands are cold.” He had nothing else to say. He understood it might be his only chance to do so, but he didn’t want to use his pendulum on her to unravel the last of her mysteries.

“They always are, no matter how much time I spend in the sun.”

“A very simple reminder for you, then.”

She nodded, her small face grim and serious. Not the face of a child at all. But when she looked back up at him, she smiled, and that made her look young again, despite her ghastly appearance. “Do you have rooms like these?”

“I have many.”

“And do you visit them as often as my brother visits his?”

“Yes. I built them and abandoned them. Maybe one day I will work up the courage to peek behind a single door. But not yet.”

“Whoever you keep in there will wait, unchanged. We always do.”

It was meant to give him hope, but all it did was made him feel haunted by the ghosts in his own mind. Her words could be understood as a bit of solace or as a thinly-veiled threat.

“Do you want to look at the other rooms?” she asked.

“Not really. I’d like to see those paintings up close.” He pointed his finger at them, still hooded by shadows on the wall furthest away from them, where the sun didn’t reach.

Mischa shook her head. “I can never see them myself. They look like they’re in the shadows, but you can’t see them when you’re right in front of them, either. I don’t know what they show, and I can’t ask my brother. They’re definitely not something we made together, and he’s hiding them from me. That is all I know.”

“I’ll ask him for you, and I’ll come back and tell you.”

“If you really want to do something kind for me, tell him to come down here and tell me himself. Tell him I miss him. It was nice meeting you, Will Graham.” She let go of his hand, and he was alone.

He made a single step in the direction of the paintings and found himself facing the wooden door leading to the foyer of the Capella Palatina. Mischa had put him right in front of his exit. It was his cue to leave, and he did.

He skipped the foyer of the chapel and returned straight to their bedroom, where he blinked and focused on the ceiling above him.

“You were gone for a while,” came Hannibal’s voice from his side.

What use was there in lying to him? “I was in the rooms you can never visit. I was curious.”

Hannibal barely changed his tone. “And?”

“They weren’t what I expected. I thought I’d be met with dungeons, darkness, stench and humidity. I didn’t exactly expect to see warm halls flooded with light. The windows were wide open, curtains billowing. A Mediterranean breeze ruffling my hair.” Will turned his head to find Hannibal’s eyes, glistening slightly in the half-dark. “And hers.”

Hannibal raised his eyebrows in realisation before Will had finished.

“I found Mischa there.”

Hannibal’s voice was strained now. “Where?”

“Dancing in a ballroom. In Venice, I think. She was never there. Why place her there?”

Hannibal propped himself up on his elbows, leaning his head against the wooden headboard of the bed. His eyes were distant for a moment, as though he had to collect his memories before being able to respond. The thought that he revisited those old ghosts that were still haunting him for Will alone had warmth bloom in his chest. “We played a game, sometimes. Our mother was Italian by birth, as you know by now, and she brought with her stories from her home. Mischa and I would hear her talk so fondly of the country she had left behind that it would sometimes feel like home to us as well. Caught behind the Iron Curtain and unable to visit that place, we would create it in our minds.”

“You shared a memory palace with Mischa as well.”

“We shared a dreamland. Our Italy differed quite a bit from reality. We had only a few stray photographs and stories, but we modelled after them what we thought was an accurate representation of the country. And we spent time in those rooms and narrow Italian alleyways, riding gondolas and feeling the sun on our skin.”

“You left her there. You didn’t banish her to darker corners.”

“I got to experience the real Italy, eventually, and I wished for nothing more than to share it with her. In this small way, I could. And so I did.”

“She’s lonely. She misses you.”

“I know. One day, perhaps…”

“She won’t mind waiting. She told me as much. In her own way she told me.”

Hannibal smiled, tears caught in his eyelashes. They didn’t fall. “I can’t disappoint her.”

“What are those pictures she can’t see? The ones I can’t see? The ones on the wall opposite the entrance.”

“Their faces. All five of them. I put them there after I was… done. I never wanted to see them again. Them, I did banish. For good.”

“But you didn’t want her to have to look them in the eyes again, either.”

“Never.”

“You were a good brother, do you even know that? Not the best, but good enough. As good as you know how to be. But you hurt her, in a way. Not in the ways you hurt me, but you did hurt her. Damaged something inside of her.”

“She would never have been like you. I wouldn’t have… wanted her to be.”

“A killer?”

Hannibal nodded. He still didn’t look at Will. So it was Will’s turn to act. He pulled Hannibal close and kissed him. Not in a consoling way; in a quite passionate and distracting way, tongue and teeth and all, until they were both panting and the tears on Hannibal’s eyelashes were smeared all over Will’s face.

“There was something else,” he added.

Will could feel Hannibal tilt his head, inquisitive as always.

“She called you an old man.”

A throw pillow lived up to its name and landed in Will’s face. He shook with laughter as he removed it. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger! Don’t-“

Another kiss cut him off, a little more desperate around the edges, but loving, loving, in a way that would make only those envious who did not _know_.


End file.
